Partners
(1982) + The Whoopee Boys (1986; Legend
Films DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: D/C- Films: D
Two films
that show how regressive Hollywood had become by the 1980s, two films involving
duos that are and should be different are exactly the same in the
infantilization department. James
Burrows’ Partners (1982) was one of
the films that killed Ryan O’Neal’s career, playing a straight cop who must go
undercover with a gay desk cop (a very wasted John Hurt) to find a killer. More offensive than the underrated Crusing (1980) could ever be, it
thrives on every bad and predictable homophobic stereotype to the very end of
its 93 awful minutes. I am no fan of La Cage Aux Folles or its overrated
U.S. version The Birdcage, but this
is worst of all, from the same writer, Francis Veber!
Two goofs
(Michael O’Keefe of Caddyshack and
Paul Rodriguez, whose career survived this mess) play two friends out to annoy
Palm Beach, Florida to death in John Byrum’s extremely unfunny The Whoopee Boys (1986) with a script
less funny than a whoopee cushion. Dead
on arrival, you can see why O’Keefe did not survive as a lead.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is soft on both discs, with substandard
color and poor detail. The Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono in both cases is a little better, though still showing their age. Both mixes are still flat. There are no extras on Partners, but Whoopee
has two trailers.
- Nicholas Sheffo
